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Entry level fire striker making(What not to do)

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bennypapa

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When I was a kid I ran across a book on blacksmithing at the local library. I have always wanted to do some smithing but for whatever reason never did.

Today saw that change and here is my first misadventure for you all to share a laugh at.

I followed some advice found here on this forum and headed down to the local farm implement store in search of hay rake tines. No prob, they had lots and so I got 1 of each. Whopping 5 bucks or so. Then it was home to my stack of soft bricks forge and borrowed propane through my homemade burner. I'll get a dedicated propane tank sometime but the grill will have to share for now.

The forging went fine and though my proportions were a little off I was satisfied for my first attempt.

Then came hardening. I don't have any automatic transmission fluid so I tried water as a quench medium. The first attempt didn't seem to work. My file could still file the metal So I reheated to orange (very unscientific and untrained eye guestimation on that folks) and tried again. What did I have to loose, right?
Well, As it turned out, the striker is what I had to loose. Not only did it not harden but it cracked badly.

DSCF0038.JPG


I dunno if you can see it.

So, lessons learned.

1. Always test materials/methods for function before investing time into making things.
2. Testing from #1 would have shown that I needed to have a couple of magnets handy to test my work piece's temperature before quenching.
3. New Holland rake tines don't like water quenching!!!!

I'll try some used motor oil next time or go buy some ATF and give it a whirl.

Thanks to what I have learned on this and some other forums I feel very confident that I can trouble shoot this and get it right eventually. If anyone has an comments or suggestions please feel free to let me know.

Now, If they would just add an extra day to the week, or a few more hours to the day I would have the time to get all my new projects done.

Have fun and keep tinkering,

Ben
 
New Holland hay rake teeth don't like a water quench? Hmmm ... that's news to me. I use them all the time for making strikers, and always quench in water. And I seldom have one crack or break - unless I try that "differential quench" where you only hold the striking surface in the water at first, then wait a bit, then quench the whole striker. Almost every time I do that I get cracks in the striker. So I heat mine up to that "critical temp" where a magnet won't stick anymore, and then quench completely in water. If I have really drawn out some of the ends a bunch and gotten them thin, I will then selectively heat those ends back up a bit to soften them.

But the best hint/tip I ever got on making strikers came from a knife maker buddy. He said to "thermal cycle" the striker just before your final heat-treat quench. That "thermal cycling" removes internal stress in the steel from the forging/drawing/bending, and also refines the metal grain structure. The smaller the internal grain structure, the less brittle it will be. And "thermal cycling" is just heating it up to critical temp and the letting it air cool till you don't see any red color in the metal. Then you repeat it two more times. Then heat to critical and quench. You can thermal cycle more than three times, but you get almost no extra benefit for more times.

Before this little tip/hint, I would sometimes have problems with strikers cracking/breaking - for no apparent reason. I would finish one up, heat treat it, check it for sparks, lay it on the workbench, and then go on to the next project. And then I would hear a metalic ... clink ... behind me, only to look and see that good striker now in 2 or 3 pieces! Internal stress caused it to break. Or my buddies and I would drop one on GRASS and have it break! Very frustrating! But that all went away when I (we) started Thermal Cycling my (our) strikers before the final quench. Best tip/hint I ever received.

Check the cracked end on your striker that broke. Does the metal grains in the end look pretty large/coarse? Snap the end off of an old file and compair how the metal looks on the ends. The file should look very fine/small grained. That is what you should be getting inside your flint striker.

Well, you got some good ... learning experience. If you can figure out how to hang onto that striker piece, it probably will throw pretty good sparks. But it also might crack/snap pretty easily again. The Heat Treat is the hard part to learn. When I started out I always had a magnet handy. Now I almost never check with it. I've "learned" the colors I need. (or so I delude myself into thinking)

Try a little more "practice" strikers from those modern hay rake teeth. And you can do a quick/simple striker from them. Just cut to length, burn the paint off, bend each end into that overall C shape, and thermal cycle then heat-treat. Yes, they will look clunky, but you also won't have much work in them. When you get the basics down on heat-treating, then you can put more work into tapering/bending/curling.

Hope these humble ramblings help.

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands
 
And here's a pic of just how simple a C striker can be.
M5E1590Rural.jpg


The Museum of Welsh Life in Wales asked me to replicate several original strikers in their
collections - for their interpreters to use in their
daily demonstrations. This one they called a Rural
striker and have it dated to 1590!

It shows just how simple a C striker can be. The
original is around 3/8 inch thick, and using those
modern hay rake teeth a pretty good replica can be
made. Just bend into that C shape, and then
flatten the sides a bit.

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the
Hinterlands
 
Great Advice, and posts, Mike. Thank you. That is the best advice I have ever heard on heat treating modern metals. :thumbsup: :hatsoff:
 
Thanks a lot for the advice.
I'll try it tomorrow if my propane supply holds out... Well, Homed Depot is close if not. Should be fun.

Now I need to find my box of magnets.

Thermal cycling here I come!

Woo Hooo


Ben
 
Here is a pic of the broken ends where I broke it off after I had decided it wasn't hard enough.
DSCF0036.JPG

What can you tell from the look of it???

Ben
 
That looks just like Mike predicted- very coarse grained. You think he has made a few thousand strikers in his day???? :shocked2: :blah: :rotf: :thumbsup:
 
Yes, the metalic grain in those pieces does look fairly coarse.

I make somewhere around 500 to 600 strikers a year - in a couple dozen different shapes/styles from early Roman times through the Medieval/Viking era on up to and through the Fur Trade eras in North America. And less than 10% of those are that classic C shape. So I've ... made a few strikers ... over the years.

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands
 
I finally tracked down that picture of that original 1590 English/Welsh "rural" striker. It's waaay too easy to lose track of things on these ... infernal machines.

Welsh-Rural1590x.jpg


Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands
 
Bennypapa,The severity of the quench makes a big difference in the finished product.Cold salt water, hot salt water, plain water, hot plain water, oil and ect.If you burn your metal, you change the grain structure.It sounds like you have enough material to do some testing of the different quenches so why don't you experiment with it before trying your project.Remember, the higher the carbon content of the metal, the eaiser the metal burns.
 
I got it right last night.
I think the main problem the first go round was that I had the metal too hot. I was working outside in the shade but it was still too bright judging by last nights work. It was dark out and you can really read the colors better that way huh??
I collected a speaker magnet that was lying around and a little dime sized cylinder shaped one about a half inch long.
First thing I did was put some of the raw stock in the fire and pull it out every 10 seconds to check it against the magnet. That gave me an idea of what critical heat for this steel looks like. I was quenching at WAY to high a temp the other day. That would explain part of my trouble, no?

The I heated and bent a new striker and began thermal cycling. I pulled often and tried not to heat too far past critical. It did get orange yellow once but never threw any sparks.

I let it air cool to dark three or four times then turned down the burner a bit and started heating up for the quench. I had to turn it end for end to get it heated evenly but it was eventually evenly colored and non-magnetic so into the water it went with a swishing back and forth.

That thing throws sparks like crazy!!!

STRIKER.JPG


I couldn't be happier!

It did occur to me that I hadn't put any kind of decoration or makers mark on it after it was hardened. DOH!!

Oh well, Now I'll have to make some more!!!

Thanks for all the help and advice everyone!! It all was spot on and I couldn't have done it without you.

Ben
 
Glad it worked out for you. And a properly heat-treated striker should throw lots of sparks with just a light ticking/glancing strike. You should not have to POUND steel against flint to get a few poor sparks. All it should take is that light glancing/ticking strike.

It's easy to watch a blacksmith make a striker. But you often miss the what/when/why of the little "details" of making it.

Don't worry about decoration. Just look at how simple that English 1590 Rural striker is. And few original strikers had any touchmark on them. The key point is how well they spark. The rest is just ... eye-candy.

Good work. But a word of caution: Blacksmithing is ADDICTIVE!

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands


p.s. And here's some of that ... eye-candy ... to help inspire your creative side. The two middle ones on the right side are Roman era strikers. The two bottom ones and the second down from the top on the right are 1500's to 1600's. And the rest are 1700's up into mid 1800's. And these are only a fraction of all the possible flint striker styles/shapes out there - over the 2500+ years they were made and used.
TinkeringFriday.jpg

Top: Mexican/Spanish Colonial 1700's to mid/late 1800's
2nd row: The R and B - Colonial American mid to late 1700's
Long bar - 1600's Nouvelle France trade
Dutch trade - mid 1600's up through 1700's
3rd row: British Crown - 1700's up to Rev War
Roman "sled" style 1st to 3rd century
4th row: English double curl - mid 1600's through late 1700's
Another Roman 1st to 3rd century single-loop "sled" style striker
bottom row: French dated 1566, but from mid 1400's up through mid 1700's
French trade early 1600's up through mid 1700's
 
Or some more "eye-candy"?

SenecaMohawkStrikers.jpg


Top two: the originals were collected from a Mohawk village site with a Jesuit mission - 1630's to 1680's - probably trade strikers from up in Nouvelle France
Middle two: the originals were collected from a Seneca village site in NY dated 1650 to 1680 - probably Dutch trade strikers
Bottom one: a Scottish style - with similarities to that one Dutch trade style. The English museum dated it 18th century.

I love those spiralled style strikers. But it is much harder to make that spiral than it seems. Especially to get it to turn out even. And yes, you do need to use the "pinch grip" instead of the "brass knuckle" grip when using these strikers.

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands
 
I love stikers. I've had a bunch of people tell me the secret recipe to making strikers. One guy skitters just the edge across the surface of water to harden it. Another waits until the steel is dull red before the quench(The metal will be too hard to strike otherwise, or so he says). All the methods seem to work. I tend to treat my strikers just like a knife blade. Normalize 3 times, heat until non magnetic and quench in oil. I skip the tempering. I tempered a few to see if it worked and the flint kind of hits the metal and sticks.

I tend to forge weld the ends to copy Hudson Bay type strikers. It gives me a chance to practice welding high carbon steel. I allways use garage door springs because I have a bazillion feet of the stuff. I've been real happy with using veggie oil to quench in. I'm not particular about the temperature. Water works, I just lean twords oil because I'm used to using it. I've found in my vast experience of maybe the two dozen or so that I've made.... (ha ha)
They tend to work better as a striker when they are hammered pretty flat and the striking surface is pretty long and flat vise curved.
I've also had customers tell me that my strikers are no good and everytime it's because the flint is as dull as a cross peen.

By the way, Nice work on all the strikers. I love reading these articles. I can certainly tell when I've been out classed. Good work guys.

Regards
Loyd Shindelbower
Loveland Colorado
P1010014.jpg
 
Pssst ... I didn't want to mention anything about that "pact with the devil" and "dancing nekkid around the bonfire" just to be able to heat-treat strikers right. At least not until they get Addicted to Blacksmithing first! And then we can talk about only using snow from the north slope of Mount Gitchgoomy for quenching those strikers while chanting the Krishna mantra backwards while standing on one foot over a pile of forge scale - to get the best sparks! They's some ... secrets ... that we have to hold back on, until after the "initiation ritural"!!!


Ah, the oval striker. I'm finding more and more of these across the centuries and cultures. The classic C shaped striker is THE MOST COMMON style of striker across all the centuries that strikers have been made and used. Yes, there are lots of little ... variations ... in them, but that simple style just is the most common from very early Roman times on up to the present. But the Oval striker is the second most common style across the centuries.

Original Oval fire steels are found at archeological sites throughout North America, especially the Great Lakes Fur Trade area. They style have been listed in trade goods lists from mid 1700's through the mid 1800's, but the oval style has been around since early Roman times. It would have been carried by a farmer, settler, hunter, soldier, or traded to one of the Tribes in the New World Colonies from the early 1700's up through the Revolution and beyond. Examples are pictured and described in the books Where Two Worlds Meet, Voices From The Rapids, Firearms Traps and Tools of the Mountain Men, A Toast To The Fur Trade, and several issues of The Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a catalog from Ross & Co. dated to 1797 that shows them offering three fire steel styles for sale - Ovals, Single Finger Loop, and Double Finger Loop (classic C shape).

Wm. Clark wrote an order for trade goods in 1811 for the Missouri Fur Trade Company that included a sketch of an oval striker next to that item on that trade goods order - to make sure that is what he would get. The types of goods and quantities ordered are almost identical to the trade goods he ordered to take along on the 1803 Voyage of Discovery. But this included that sketch of an oval striker to make sure that is what was being ordered. This is now being interpreted by many historians as fairly good proof that the flint strikers taken on the Lewis and Clark Journey were oval strikers - 144 flint strikers for trade/gifts to the Indians (one gross) and 30 for their men to use. Similar ones were supplied by Hiram Cutler of Sheffield, England to Pierre Chouteau Jr. and company in 1838-40. In an 1835 invoice, they sent 50 dozen oval fire steels up the Missouri River on the steamboat Diana C. A. Halstead. I forge mine to a general size of 3 by 1 1/2 by 1/8 inch thick - per the dimensions of many originals found at Grand Portage and all around the Great Lakes.

brightgroup.jpg


Now, some of those original oval flint strikers found up around the Great Lakes were only 1/16 inch thick! And some were even THINNER! Well, if you drop down from 1/8 to 1/16 inch thick, you get two strikers from the same amount of steel and the same weight when packing. So two sales instead of one. And, those oval strikers being thinner, they would be much more likely to break - resulting in the need to purchase another - planned obsolescence! I've tried getting a good heat-treat on some ovals only 1/16 inch thick, but I haven't had good luck so far. That "balance" between hard enough to throw good sparks while still being not too brittle is pretty tricky to accomplish with that thin of a striker.

Fun projects, these flint strikers. Such a common "tool" of everyday living over so many centuries of use. But only a little has been written about them. They just don't seem to have the ... glamour ... of weapons or coins/jewelry. They're just a working tool.

Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands

p.s. Oh, that teardrop shaped striker is generally called a Voyageur Flint Striker. The HBC sold/traded them. And they generally had a "blunt" end on them - which many times got ground/filed into a screwdriver end. But they generally date from the 1840's to 1860's. Although, the Vikings had a similar version around 900-1000 A.D., and so did the Romans back in the 1st to 3rd Centuries. And their versions came to a fairly sharp point.

Sorry the pic is so dark. It's the only one I have right now of some oval strikers.
 
Here's a few of the strikers I traded for with Mike and Darrel Aune.

I still have the whale and dragon, but the rest now live happily with reenactors all around the UK.

sm-firesteel002.jpg


Eric
 
:bow: You guys are masters of the steel.
Question: What is the best flint to use? Who would have it?
Thanks for posting pics of you work. :hatsoff:
 
I'd suggest that the best flint to use is that which is local to you. I favour English flint because I have lots of it. I can pick great nodules off the beach at Whitby. If I go up to the north west of Scotland however, I can get obsidian. I can get good sparks with obsidian, but it's fragile and won't last long. If you are stuck for flint, but have a striker, just use the bottom of a broken beer or wine bottle - so long as it has a sharp edge.

Eric
 
Glass?? :shocked2: :shocked2:
I can see me now sitting in the ER with my fingers all cut up, Sir what happaned? :rotf:
But, thanks for the reply, Eric. :hatsoff:
 
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